Dogmatics in Outline Book

It's been about a year since I first started and I have finally finished Barth's Dogmatics in Outline. That makes the book sound really long, but in fact it is quite short, especially when you compare it to Barth's 13-volume Church Dogmatics. Still I took a year to read it in three different installments for a series of theology classes.

I'm going to go ahead and give this book the coveted 5 star rating, even while saying that most people probably won't want to read it. Barth's wording is dense, and his thinking and terminology is so outside-the-box that it often took me re-reading the same paragraph 2-3 times just to begin to grasp what he was getting at. But when I did I was frequently blown away. He has such a fresh approach to Christian theology. It's quite Biblical, and even brings a lot of correction to where modern theologies have deviated from Biblical intent, yet it often feels like hearing the Biblical truth for the first time. And for someone who is obviously a very intellectual thinker, Barth occasionally uses imagery that is disarmingly simple and arresting in its impact. I can see now why there are so many Barth students and fans out there. As I read I found myself constantly wanting to stop and tell my wife about some new insight I was getting from my reading.

I can't say that I agree with Barth's approach to everything Christian, but this particular book was a great help to me and very enlightening. Would I have made it through without it being assigned for homework? I'm not sure. I can be a bit of a wuss when it comes to reading material this rigorous. But I like to think the payoff would have encouraged me to keep reading, just like it did when I was doing it for homework.

In the end, I have to acknowledge that this book does indeed deserve the 5-star "amazing" rating. Short, powerful, worldview-changing, and coming from perhaps one of the most important thinkers and certainly most important theologians, of the 20th century.